Clara Collet, Winston Churchill, and the Board of Trade

Deborah McDonald

[Deborah McDonald [dmcdonald@onwight.net] has kindly shared these materials from her Collet website with the Victorian Web. Her biography of Collet was published by Woburn Press in November 2003]

By May 1908, Winston Churchill had been elected the new President of the
Board of Trade. Collet had by 1903 been promoted to the post of Senior
Investigator with the Board with an emphasis on women's work. Churchill was
responsible for the implementation of some wide reaching reforms during his
time with the Liberal party. He took the radical stance on every issue
confronting his party even including support of female suffrage.

About this era, Clara Collet commented in her diary that she needed to, "put
on record at once the complete changes in my official work. On Friday
morning I was told that I was to attend a conference in the President's room
at 5pm on Wages Boards." Others present were Sidney Webb, Hubert Llewellyn
Smith and, of course, Churchill himself. The meeting was called to consider
the possibility of producing a Wages Board Bill. The Home Office was
opposed to such a measure.

Collet continued her close association with Churchill during his time
working for the Board of Trade and at one stage attended a meeting in the
House of Commons. It was, "to be held in Sir Edward Grey's room at the
House of Commons. It is the first time I had gone there. The police were
rather nervous about me but took my word for being authorised to go in."
However Collet found the occasion instructive and useful.

On another occasion Collet commented that,
"I don't think the Board of Trade
loves Mr Churchill, but I confess that he interests me as a human being
whatever his faults may be. It is partly because I only know
'intellectuals' or 'thoughtful men' that this type of person governing them
appeals to a side of me which might belong to a respectable bohemian."
Churchill's attitude towards working with Collet as a woman is also
highlighted in her diary. She commented that he

"damned that fellow
Carlisle" and then apologised to me for doing so. It is very amusing to
contrast the different ways in which they treat me. Mr Askwith aims at
treating me like a man with no more respect than a man in the same place;
all the others treat me with a little more consideration because I am a
woman, but quite rightly don't put themselves out for me & treat me as a
colleague. (August 1910)

In 1909/10 Collet worked with Churchill closely over the introduction of
Labour Exchanges ensuring that amendments were made to the bill to improve
circumstances for women. Churchill was also to be responsible for the
introduction of the Trade Boards, which were to fix minimum rates of pay for
timework and piecework. Collet spent many of her early retirement
years working for various trade boards helping to eliminate the worst of the
charlatans paying below the minimum rates of pay. She also worked hard to
produce statistics to support the "fair wages bill" and to improve the
situation for the employees in "sweated trades" in London.

Thus Collet invaded the hallowed male territory of parliament with
pragmatism and stealth. She did not see the need to chain herself to
railings in order to push the cause of women further but used the more
effective method of simply being there and doing the job well, proving to
these influential men that women were just as capable as they. In 1918,
after the First World War, when women were finally given the vote in
Britain, one can imagine that many of those politicians voting for women's
enfranchisement would have had Clara Collet in mind when they cast their
"yes" vote.

Collet worked for the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour (as it
became known in 1917), for twenty years. After her retirement she continued
to sit of various Trade Boards. Such was her enthusiasm and determination,
that in 1926, during the General Strike she somehow managed to commission a
hearse in which she was driven to work. She was sixty-six years old at this
time yet she was still as determined as ever to carry out the job she had
been set to do.

Collet's association with Churchill lasted until Churchill left the Board of
Trade for the Home Office in February 1910 and although it does not appear
that the two of them became more than working acquaintances, her influence
must undoubtedly have been felt by Churchill during his time at the Board
and it was to her statistics that he would have been drawn when making
decisions about women's matters.